Which COUNTRY has produced the greatest literature?

I have read most, if not all, of this thread, and there has been nothing that even approached being a definitive comment. There have been many assertions of opinions, but those were fundamentally about personal preferences. If someone prefers the Russian novels he has read to American novels that he has read, that means nothing more. That person might not like any Russian novels, except those that have already been read, and the converse is true for American novels. A much more useful exercise would be to determine what the best form of literature is, using only objectively verifiable criteria, then it would be possible to consider which examples of that form of literature were best.

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Originally Posted by Antiquarian

I agree with you, Peter. It's impossible to say which country produced the greatest literature. There is no definitive answer.

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There will be when I become Emperor and command everyone to agree with me. :)

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Originally Posted by Antiquarian

But we haven't reached that time yet. ;)

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Not quite yet.

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

that might just be because I'm lucky enough to live in a country with religious freedom and tolerance.

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That was a bit rude. Are you american? I'm British.

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I'll split the difference with you. Eliot applies for British citizenship in 1927. That means Prufrock, The Wasteland, and The Hollow Men are all articles of American literature, and you guys can have full title to Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats free and clear.

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Done deal. Somewhere between The Hollow Men and Ash Wednesday Eliot becomes a Briton. So it was a British writer that received the Nobel Prize? ;)

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Originally Posted by PeterL

Rebellion is a fundamental part of the American psyche; thus rejecting America is fundamentally American.

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So, anyone born in America is inescapably American? They either follow American culture, or are fundementally American by rejecting it? Seems something of a catch 22.

Also, I do agree that the discussion is far too subjective, and so probably doesn't have an answer.

You're all fools who think Eliot British. His style is very American, and doesn't reflect the English tradition of the time at all, but rather reflects a post-Whitmanian American tradition. That's like calling Anne Hebert a French poet, and not French Canadian, or calling Joyce Swiss, or some other silliness. He was definitely not English, despite his trying. Even his religious views seem to be an American's, regardless of his critique of American religion. He, to me at least, didn't seem to get what European religion is all about.

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Originally Posted by PeterL

A much more useful exercise would be to determine what the best form of literature is, using only objectively verifiable criteria, then it would be possible to consider which examples of that form of literature were best.

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I don't think you can find a purely objective answer for this thread anyways that is why some of the people here including me returned to our subjective view over this issue. I mean it is virtually impossbile to tell which is better because after all it is a matter of taste and if you don't like a novel some else will. I mean seriously, it sounds easy in theory but impossible in practice to tell which type of lit is the best.

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Originally Posted by JBI

You surely are joking.
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Hardy, Dickens, Wordsworth, Keats, Blake, Johnson, Jonson, Spenser, etc.

Irish literature, in the way that you portray it, seems to be a new phenomenon. The English tradition has stronger roots, and has, I would argue, a larger influence on modern (post-medieval) Irish letters than the Irish one. Either way, you missed Swift and Wilde.

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Of course Irish literature is a new phenomenon - when most of the writers you mention were alive Ireland was basically a peasant society colonised by the British. Also my list was not intended to be comprehensive. In addition to Wilde and Swift I could add Maria Edgeworth, Sheridan Le Fanu, Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Elizabeth Bowen, Brian Friel, Benedict Kiely, Mary Lavin, Bernard MacLaverty, Eugene McCabe, John McGahern, Edna O'Brien, Sean O'Faolain, Liam O'Flaherty, James Plunkett, Somerille and Ross, James Stephens, William Trevor, Colm Toibin, Sebastian Barry, Brendan Behan, Jennifer Johnston, Thomas Kilroy, Frank McGuinness, Synge, John Banville, Dermot Bolger, Kate O'Brien, Seamus Heaney...I'll stop before this gets boring but its not a bad list for a country of 4 million people on the edge of Europe. Of course the concept of 'literature' arose and was developed in the UK but I would argue that Irish writers have taken this and run with it like no other nationality in the 20th and 21st centuries. I also feel Irish writing and appreciation of writing is in a very healthy state today. Irish writers have won the booker in 2 of the last 3 years. Our theatres are not full of musicals and you would certainly never find a novel by Jordan at the top of our bestseller list.

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Originally Posted by JBI

You surely are joking.
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Hardy, Dickens, Wordsworth, Keats, Blake, Johnson, Jonson, Spenser, etc.

Irish literature, in the way that you portray it, seems to be a new phenomenon. The English tradition has stronger roots, and has, I would argue, a larger influence on modern (post-medieval) Irish letters than the Irish one. Either way, you missed Swift and Wilde.

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Of course Irish literature is a new phenomenon - when most of the writers you mention were alive Ireland was basically a peasant society colonised by the British. Also my list was not intended to be comprehensive. In addition to Wilde and Swift I could add Maria Edgeworth, Sheridan Le Fanu, Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Elizabeth Bowen, Brian Friel, Benedict Kiely, Mary Lavin, Bernard MacLaverty, Eugene McCabe, John McGahern, Edna O'Brien, Sean O'Faolain, Liam O'Flaherty, James Plunkett, Somerville and Ross, James Stephens, William Trevor, Colm Toibin, Sebastian Barry, Brendan Behan, Jennifer Johnston, Thomas Kilroy, Frank McGuinness, Synge, John Banville, Dermot Bolger, Kate O'Brien, Seamus Heaney...I'll stop before this gets boring but its not a bad list for a country of 4 million people on the edge of Europe. Of course the concept of 'literature' arose and was developed in the UK but I would argue that Irish writers have taken this and run with it like no other nationality in the 20th and 21st centuries. I also feel Irish writing and appreciation of writing is in a very healthy state today. Irish writers have won the booker in 2 of the last 3 years. Our theatres are not full of musicals and you would certainly never find a novel by Jordan at the top of our bestseller list.

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Originally Posted by Geraint

So, anyone born in America is inescapably American? They either follow American culture, or are fundamentally American by rejecting it? Seems something of a catch 22.

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If you were born as a human, you wouldn't expect to change that condition during your life, would you?

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Originally Posted by Simao

I don't think you can find a purely objective answer for this thread anyways that is why some of the people here including me returned to our subjective view over this issue. I mean it is virtually impossbile to tell which is better because after all it is a matter of taste and if you don't like a novel some else will. I mean seriously, it sounds easy in theory but impossible in practice to tell which type of lit is the best.

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Personally, I do not believe that objectivity is possible.

Objectivity is impossible, being human, but I'll give this my best shot:

In my own, PERSONAL view, I believe Britain has produced the MOST good quality writing. I don't beleive that means that the very best piece of literature ever written necessarily came from Britain- it simply means to me that the most (quantity, not quality) good quality literature came from there.

I'm really enjoying a lot of up and coming Canadian authors right now.

Really, you can't compare- nobody has read every work ever written from every country, people's tastes differ, and it's nearly impossible to compare works ranging from Neo Classical to the Modern and Alternative literature genres.

And I think that subjectivity is ridiculous. The people who espouse that retarded doctrine have almost nothing to contribute to the discussion. If you get hung up on the impossibility of proving anything, you never try to find out what can be known. If you stubbornly persist in thinking that you can't learn anything from comparing and contrasting your thoughts with other people, then you will never learn.

In questions such as these, the answer is unimportant. What is of paramount importance is that we grapple with the problems the questions raise to improve our understanding of the issues along with our own innate ability to reason critically. That subjectivist attitude, "Nothing is wholly knowable, or perfectly provable, so what's the point in asking questions" is counterproductive and ultimately defeatist.

While it may be arrogant to suggest that you have a better grasp of an issue or concept than another person, it is far more arrogant to suppose that just because a concept or problem is beyond you that no one could possibly have any relevant information which bears upon this topic. May I also suggest, that you bring the full powers of your subjectivist minds to bear on the concept of subjectivism and admit that in some cases, with reason and experience, something is knowable.

When somebody tells me that their opinion is subjective, what I interpret that to mean is that they are admitting their own incapacity to distinguish merit from flaw, reason from error, and truth from fiction. As an objective person, I have no choice but to weigh that consideration accordingly when I access their judgement. If your opinion does not stem from experience and careful analysis of texts, then you are right: people should take what you have to say lightly.

The minute that you submit to subjectivity, you number yourself among the stubbornly blind and the willfully ignorant. Stop your ears with wax. Draw blinders over every window. Let no light into that brain of yours and rest in darkness. Woe to you, for the opinions of the unteachable are no different from those who have never been taught.

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Originally Posted by Antiquarian

Oh, Sweets, please. Don't use words like "retarded," okay? You don't need to. You're too intelligent and present too convincing an argument. I don't think I'm retarded nor do I think I've nothing to contribute to the conversation, however, I do believe in subjectivity - to a degree. Of course there are rules that govern good writing and someone who is aware of those rules can tell good writing from sloppy writing. In that way, writing is truly objective.

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I apologize. That was a poor choice of words. I would never say that a person is retarded. I meant that the idea was retarded. Merriam-Webster defines the word as:

1. to slow up especially by preventing or hindering advance or accomplishment, impede
2. to delay academic progress by failure to promote.

I do see the prevalence of subjectivity as the reason why writing is still regarded as a craft and not as a science. It acts in a retrograde motion to the accumulation of facts and knowledge, because it assumes that there are no facts and knowledge to be accumulated. The way it's taught in schools is bizarre and pathological. When I see an educator, or some other intelligent person espouse this belief I want to scream.

The chain of thought that originated in skepticism begins, so I believe, in Socrates: a man who claimed that nothing was knowable, but who nevertheless was constantly engaging people with questions about what they knew. He used his skeptical inquiry not as a basis for shutting down argument as moderns so often do, not as an end of conversation, but as a starting point for minutely observing pre-concieved notions, and examining issues in greater detail than had been done previously.

Descartes, probably the father of our modern philosophy, after admitting that all he could know was that he was thinking uses that as a springboard to build an entirely new and unique philosophy, from which we derive, in part, the scientific method.

Scientists base all of their knowledge on theories and hypotheses because no idea is assumed ever to be proven. Even the most ancient scientific theories are open to testing, falsifiability, and peer review; but our cars still run, electricity heats our houses, gravity remains in effect.

Through the ages, the principles of good writing have been tested time and again, and I have no problem with a continued debate about their properties and how they work. What I have a problem with is when people declare some sort of hazy relativism to be a reason for silencing the debate and declaring other peoples opinions to be unfounded and without merit no matter what their qualifications.

Petrarch's Love is in the process of getting her Ph.D. in Renaissance literature. SaintLukesGuild and Virgil have each devoted decades to the study of books and writing. Who are these people to tell them that they have wasted their lives, chasing a dragon they can never catch?

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

And I think that subjectivity is ridiculous. The people who espouse that retarded doctrine have almost nothing to contribute to the discussion. If you get hung up on the impossibility of proving anything, you never try to find out what can be known. If you stubbornly persist in thinking that you can't learn anything from comparing and contrasting your thoughts with other people, then you will never learn.

In questions such as these, the answer is unimportant. What is of paramount importance is that we grapple with the problems the questions raise to improve our understanding of the issues along with our own innate ability to reason critically. That subjectivist attitude, "Nothing is wholly knowable, or perfectly provable, so what's the point in asking questions" is counterproductive and ultimately defeatist.

While it may be arrogant to suggest that you have a better grasp of an issue or concept than another person, it is far more arrogant to suppose that just because a concept or problem is beyond you that no one could possibly have any relevant information which bears upon this topic. May I also suggest, that you bring the full powers of your subjectivist minds to bear on the concept of subjectivism and admit that in some cases, with reason and experience, something is knowable.

When somebody tells me that their opinion is subjective, what I interpret that to mean is that they are admitting their own incapacity to distinguish merit from flaw, reason from error, and truth from fiction. As an objective person, I have no choice but to weigh that consideration accordingly when I access their judgement. If your opinion does not stem from experience and careful analysis of texts, then you are right: people should take what you have to say lightly.

The minute that you submit to subjectivity, you number yourself among the stubbornly blind and the willfully ignorant. Stop your ears with wax. Draw blinders over every window. Let no light into that brain of yours and rest in darkness. Woe to you, for the opinions of the unteachable are no different from those who have never been taught.

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Does all that mean that you expect you accept your opinions as objectively true?

If yes, then please prove the truth of your assertions.